Kashaya language
Encyclopedia
Kashaya is a name for a branch of Pomo people
whose historical home is the Pacific Coast
line of what is now Sonoma County, California
, and also their severely endangered
Pomoan language. The Pomoan languages
have been classified as part of the Hokan language family
, although this proposal is controversial. The name Kashaya corresponds to words in neighboring languages with meanings such as "skillful" and "expert gambler". It is spoken by the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of the Stewarts Point Rancheria
.
Vowel length is contrastive in pairs such as ʔihya "bone" versus ʔihya: "wind", and dono "hill, mountain" versus dono: "uphill".
articulation perhaps best transcribed in IPA as /t̻/. The alveolar stop ṭ is an apical
articulation, more precisely /t̺/. For younger speakers it resembles the English t in position. This chart treats aspirated and glottalized sonorants as single segments; Oswalt analyzes them as sequences of a sonorant plus /h/ or /ʔ/, from which they often derive.
The consonants /f, r/ occur only in loanwords; due to the influence of English, loans from Spanish and Russian receive a pronunciation of /r/ like that in American English. The voiced stops /b, d/ are the realization of /mʼ, nʼ/ in onset position.
requires a single onset
consonant; no onset clusters
are permitted. In most contexts, the rhyme
consists of a vowel that may be long or followed by a single consonant in the coda
, resulting in the possible syllables CV, CV:, and CVC. Examples of these structures are duwi "coyote", mo:de: "is running (non-final)", and kʰošciʔ "to bow".
A few loanword
s do have an onset cluster, such as fré:nu "bridle" and stú:fa "stove" (from Spanish
freno, estufa). Loans may also have superheavy
CV:C syllables, since stressed
vowels in the source language are typically borrowed with a long vowel: pó:spara "match", kú:lpa "fault", pé:čʰka "brick" (Spanish fósforo, culpa; Russian
péčka "oven"). An exceptional word with CVCC is huʔúyṭ’boṭ’bo "gnat".
Superheavy CV:C and CVCC syllables are well attested word-finally in specific verb forms. For example, the Suppositional suffix /ins’/ can be final as in /mo-ala-ins’/ yielding mo:lans’ "he must have run down". More typically a superheavy syllable occurs when the rightmost suffix is one of several evidential suffixes containing an /a/ vowel that deletes when no other suffix follows, such as the Circumstantial /qa/ in sinamqʰ "he must have drowned" and the Visual /ya/ in moma:y "I saw it run in".
is quite complex and the main stress can fall on any of the first five syllables in a phrase, depending on various factors. According to the analysis in Buckley (1994), iambs are constructed from left to right and the leftmost foot generally receives the main stress: (momácʰ)(mela) "I ran in", (kél)(macʰ) "he is peeking in there". Non-initial feet do not receive secondary stress but lead to lengthening of vowels in open syllables (which however does not apply to word-final vowels nor to a large set of suffixes occurring toward the end of the word). The initial syllable is extrametrical
unless the word begins with a monosyllabic root, as in the case of /mo/ "run". For example, the footing in ca(qʰamá:)(lawi:)(biʔ) "start to cut downward" with the root /caqʰam/ "cut" skips the first syllable, while in (momú:)(lic’e:)(duce:)du "keep running all the way around" this is blocked by the short root /mo/ "run".
The pattern is further complicated when the first foot begins on a syllable that has a long vowel, as in di:c’- "tell". If the following syllable is closed, the stress shifts to the foot that contains that syllable: (di:)(c’áh)(qaw) "cause to bring a message out here". If the long vowel is followed by a CV syllable, i.e. if the initial sequence to be footed is CV:CV, the length moves rightward to create CVCV: and the stress similarly shifts to the next foot: (dic’a:)(qoc’í) "bring a message out!". Combined with extrametricality, this can lead to stress as far in as the fifth syllable: mu(naci:)(ducé:)du "always be too shy" from the root /muna:c/ "be shy"; this verb forms a minimal pair with /munac/ "gather", which lacks stress shift in mu(nací:)(duce:)du "always gather".
While iambic lengthening is determined by footing within a word, stress can be reassigned at the phrasal level across word boundaries: q’oʔ(di ʔí)(ce:)du "be good!" where q’oʔdi is the adjective "good" and the remainder is the imperative verb.
; it is primarily suffixing but has an important set of instrumental prefixes on verbs.
Only a few of the most important categories can be illustrated here.
For example, the root /hca/ "knock over" can occur unprefixed as "fall over" where no agency is indicated, but is typically prefixed to expand upon the meaning: ba-hca- "knock over with snout", bi-hcha- "throw someone in wrestling", ca-hcha- "knock over by backing into", da-hcha- "push over with the hand", du-hca- "push over with the finger", di-hcha- "be knocked over by a falling object", etc.
Position class XIV (Evidentials, Modals, Imperatives, Futures, Absolutive, Adverbializers) represents the largest set of suffixes and is the only slot that is obligatorily filled in every verb.
A few examples of verbs with many affixes, the root shown in bold:
Oswalt (1961) reports that younger speakers tend to favor the SVO order typical of English.
Personal names take the suffix -to in the objective case, zero in the subjective.
Pronouns have distinct forms in subjective and objective case; the forms are not easily analyzed but the objective case generally ends in -(a)l or -to.
Demonstratives are also distinguished for case; they are given here as subjective/objective:
refers to markings according to whether a subordinate
verb has the same or different subject as the main verb. In Kashaya it also marks whether the time of the
action is the same, or preceding the main verb action in the
past or future. There is no consistent expression of
these categories except for the element /pʰi/ in both future
suffixes, but the remaining /la/ is not identifiable as a separate suffix.
The suffix containing /li/ is realized as -wli after vowels, -u:li (or /uwli/) after d, and -ʔli after other consonants; this allomorphy is related to that of the very common Absolutive suffix, -w, -u, -ʔ. A few examples of these morphemes:
Pomo people
The Pomo people are an indigenous peoples of California. The historic Pomo territory in northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point...
whose historical home is the Pacific Coast
Pacific Coast
A country's Pacific coast is the part of its coast bordering the Pacific Ocean.-The Americas:Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western border.* Geography of Canada* Geography of Chile* Geography of Colombia...
line of what is now Sonoma County, California
Sonoma County, California
Sonoma County, located on the northern coast of the U.S. state of California, is the largest and northernmost of the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties. Its population at the 2010 census was 483,878. Its largest city and county seat is Santa Rosa....
, and also their severely endangered
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
Pomoan language. The Pomoan languages
Pomoan languages
Pomoan is a family of endangered languages spoken in northern California by the Pomo people on the Pacific Coast. According to the 2000 census, there are 255 speakers of the languages...
have been classified as part of the Hokan language family
Hokan languages
The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families spoken in California, Arizona and Mexico. In nearly a century since Edward Sapir first proposed the "Hokan" hypothesis, little additional evidence has been found that these families were related to each other...
, although this proposal is controversial. The name Kashaya corresponds to words in neighboring languages with meanings such as "skillful" and "expert gambler". It is spoken by the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of the Stewarts Point Rancheria
Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of the Stewarts Point Rancheria
The Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of the Stewarts Point Rancheria is a federally recognized tribe of Pomo people in Sonoma County, California. They are also known as the Kashaya Pomo.-Reservation:...
.
Vowels
Kashaya has five vowels, which all occur as short and long.| Short Vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in... |
Long Vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in... |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
Front | Back | |
| High (close) | i | u | iː | uː |
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
e | o | eː | oː |
| Low (open) | a | aː | ||
Vowel length is contrastive in pairs such as ʔihya "bone" versus ʔihya: "wind", and dono "hill, mountain" versus dono: "uphill".
Consonants
Kashaya has the consonants shown in the chart below, following the transcription style established by Oswalt (1961). The letter c represents the affricate /t͡ʃ/, which patterns phonologically as a palatal stop. The coronal stops differ not so much in the location of the contact against the top of the mouth as in the configuration of the tongue. The dental stop t is described by Oswalt (1961) as post-dental among older speakers but as interdental among younger speakers more heavily influenced by English, similar to the place of articulation of /θ/. This dental stop has a laminalLaminal consonant
A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...
articulation perhaps best transcribed in IPA as /t̻/. The alveolar stop ṭ is an apical
Apical consonant
An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives...
articulation, more precisely /t̺/. For younger speakers it resembles the English t in position. This chart treats aspirated and glottalized sonorants as single segments; Oswalt analyzes them as sequences of a sonorant plus /h/ or /ʔ/, from which they often derive.
| Labial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Dental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | plain | p | t [t̻] | ṭ [t̺] | c [t͡ʃ] | k | q | ʔ |
| aspirated Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ... |
pʰ | tʰ [t̻ʰ] | ṭʰ [t̺ʰ] | cʰ [t͡ʃʰ] | kʰ | qʰ | ||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
pʼ | tʼ [t̻ʼ] | ṭʼ [t̺ʼ] | cʼ [t͡ʃʼ] | kʼ | qʼ | ||
| voiced | b | d [d̺] | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | (f) | s | š [ʃ] | h | |||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
sʼ | |||||||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
plain Phonation Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology... |
m | n | |||||
| aspirated Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ... |
mʰ | nʰ | ||||||
| glottalized Glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice... |
mʼ | nʼ | ||||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
plain Phonation Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology... |
w | l (r) | y | ||||
| aspirated Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ... |
wʰ | lʰ (rʰ) | yʰ | |||||
| glottalized Glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice... |
wʼ | lʼ (rʼ) | yʼ |
The consonants /f, r/ occur only in loanwords; due to the influence of English, loans from Spanish and Russian receive a pronunciation of /r/ like that in American English. The voiced stops /b, d/ are the realization of /mʼ, nʼ/ in onset position.
Syllable structure
In the normal case, every syllableSyllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
requires a single onset
Onset
Onset may refer to:*Onset , the beginning of a musical note or sound*Interonset interval, a term in music*Syllable onset, a term in phonetics and phonology*Onset, Massachusetts, village in the United States...
consonant; no onset clusters
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
are permitted. In most contexts, the rhyme
Syllable rime
In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. It is the part of the syllable used in poetic rhyme, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech.The rime is usually the...
consists of a vowel that may be long or followed by a single consonant in the coda
Syllable coda
In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...
, resulting in the possible syllables CV, CV:, and CVC. Examples of these structures are duwi "coyote", mo:de: "is running (non-final)", and kʰošciʔ "to bow".
A few loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s do have an onset cluster, such as fré:nu "bridle" and stú:fa "stove" (from Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
freno, estufa). Loans may also have superheavy
Syllable weight
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical poetry, both Greek and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line....
CV:C syllables, since stressed
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
vowels in the source language are typically borrowed with a long vowel: pó:spara "match", kú:lpa "fault", pé:čʰka "brick" (Spanish fósforo, culpa; Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
péčka "oven"). An exceptional word with CVCC is huʔúyṭ’boṭ’bo "gnat".
Superheavy CV:C and CVCC syllables are well attested word-finally in specific verb forms. For example, the Suppositional suffix /ins’/ can be final as in /mo-ala-ins’/ yielding mo:lans’ "he must have run down". More typically a superheavy syllable occurs when the rightmost suffix is one of several evidential suffixes containing an /a/ vowel that deletes when no other suffix follows, such as the Circumstantial /qa/ in sinamqʰ "he must have drowned" and the Visual /ya/ in moma:y "I saw it run in".
Stress
The determination of stressStress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
is quite complex and the main stress can fall on any of the first five syllables in a phrase, depending on various factors. According to the analysis in Buckley (1994), iambs are constructed from left to right and the leftmost foot generally receives the main stress: (momácʰ)(mela) "I ran in", (kél)(macʰ) "he is peeking in there". Non-initial feet do not receive secondary stress but lead to lengthening of vowels in open syllables (which however does not apply to word-final vowels nor to a large set of suffixes occurring toward the end of the word). The initial syllable is extrametrical
Extrametricality
In linguistics, extrametricality is a tool for prosodic analysis of words in a language. In certain languages, a particular segment or prosodic unit of a word may be ignored for the purposes of determining the stress structure of the word...
unless the word begins with a monosyllabic root, as in the case of /mo/ "run". For example, the footing in ca(qʰamá:)(lawi:)(biʔ) "start to cut downward" with the root /caqʰam/ "cut" skips the first syllable, while in (momú:)(lic’e:)(duce:)du "keep running all the way around" this is blocked by the short root /mo/ "run".
The pattern is further complicated when the first foot begins on a syllable that has a long vowel, as in di:c’- "tell". If the following syllable is closed, the stress shifts to the foot that contains that syllable: (di:)(c’áh)(qaw) "cause to bring a message out here". If the long vowel is followed by a CV syllable, i.e. if the initial sequence to be footed is CV:CV, the length moves rightward to create CVCV: and the stress similarly shifts to the next foot: (dic’a:)(qoc’í) "bring a message out!". Combined with extrametricality, this can lead to stress as far in as the fifth syllable: mu(naci:)(ducé:)du "always be too shy" from the root /muna:c/ "be shy"; this verb forms a minimal pair with /munac/ "gather", which lacks stress shift in mu(nací:)(duce:)du "always gather".
While iambic lengthening is determined by footing within a word, stress can be reassigned at the phrasal level across word boundaries: q’oʔ(di ʔí)(ce:)du "be good!" where q’oʔdi is the adjective "good" and the remainder is the imperative verb.
Phonological processes
A large number of processes affect the realization of underlying sounds in Kashaya. A representative sample is given here.- The glottalized nasals /m’, n’/ surface unchanged in the syllable coda, but change to voiced stops /b, d/ in the onset: cf. the root /can’/ "see, look" in can’pʰi "if he sees" and cadu "look!".
- The default vowel /i/ changes to /a/ after /m/, and to /u/ after /d/ (from underlying /n’/): cf. the Imperative /i/ in hanoy-i "limp!", pʰa-nem-a "punch him!", cad-u "look!".
- Any vowel changes to /a/ after a uvular: /ʔusaq-in/ → ʔusá:qan "while washing the face", /sima:q-eti/ → sima:qatí "although he's asleep".
- Plain stops are aspirated in the coda:
- A uvular stop in the coda generally loses its place of articulation: /sima:q-ti/ → simahti "about to fall asleep". Exceptions exist before certain suffixes and in loanwords such as taqʰma "dress" (from AlutiiqAlutiiq languageThe Alutiiq language is a close relative to the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language spoken in the western and southwestern Alaska, but is considered a distinct language...
). DebuccalizationDebuccalizationDebuccalization is a sound change in which a consonant loses its original place of articulation and becomes or . The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspiration, but in phonetics aspiration is the burst of air accompanying a plosive...
of other stops occurs in various contexts as well. - An aspirated stop in a prefix dissimilates from an /h/ or an aspirated stop at the beginning of the root, similar to Grassmann's LawGrassmann's LawGrassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration...
: cf. the prefix /pʰu/ "by blowing" with aspiration in pʰu-de:du "be blown along" but without it in pu-hcew "a windbreak".
Morphology
Kashaya can be classified as a polysynthetic languagePolysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. Whereas isolating languages have a low morpheme-to-word ratio, polysynthetic languages have extremely high morpheme-to-word ratios.Not all languages can be...
; it is primarily suffixing but has an important set of instrumental prefixes on verbs.
Nouns
Noun morphology is modest. The main examples are prefixes that mark possession of kinship terms. The first person has several allomorphs including the prefix ʔa:- and CV: reduplication; the latter is informal and is associated with phonologically less marked stems, no doubt derived historically from child pronunciations. The prefixes mi-, miya:-, ma- mark second, third, and reflexive ("one's own"). These prefixes occur with the suffixes -n’, -s’ depending on the stem and prefix. Examples with /qa/ "grandmother" are miqas’ "your ~", miyá:qas’ "his/her/their ~", and informal ka:kan’ "my grandma", based on /ka/ simplified from /qa/.Verbs
Verbs take a great variety of suffixes divided into many position classes. There are also instrumental prefixes that figure crucially in the use of many verb stems.Position classes
Oswalt (1961) identifies the following position classes; it can be seen that there is far more complexity in the set of suffixes than in the prefixes.- Prefixes
- A — Instrumental
- B — Plural Act
- Root
- Inner Group Suffixes
- I — Plural Agent
- II — Reduplication
- III — Essive, Terrestrial
- IV — Semelfactive, Inceptive, Plural Act, Plural Movement
- Middle Group Suffixes
- Va — Directionals
- Vb — Directionals/Inceptives
- VI — Reflexive, Reciprocal
- VII — Causative
- VIII — Locomotory
- IX — Durative
- X — Distributive
- Outer Group Suffixes
- XI — Defunctive
- XII — Negative
- XIII — First Person Object, Remote Past, Inferential
- XIV — Evidentials, Modals, Imperatives, Futures, Absolutive, Adverbializers
- XVv — Nonfinal Verb, Responsive, Interrogative
- XVn — Subjective, Objective
- XVb — Explanatory
Only a few of the most important categories can be illustrated here.
Instrumental prefixes
Many verbs cannot occur without a prefix that provides information about the manner of the action described. These 20 instrumental prefixes, all of the shape CV, are the following.- ba- "with the lips, snout, or beak; by speech (or hearing)"
- bi- "by encircling, e.g. with the arms; by sewing, eating (esp. with a spoon)"
- ca- "with the rear end, a massive or bulky object, a knife"
- cu- "with a round object, flowing water, the front end; by shooting"
- cʰi- "by holding a small part of a larger object, e.g. a handle"
- da- "with the hand (palm), paw; by waves"
- du- "with the finger"
- di- "by gravity, falling, a heavy weight"
- ha- "with a swinging motion"
- hi- "with the body"
- ma- "with the sole of the foot, claws, the butt of the hand"
- mi- "with the small end of a long object, the toes, nose; by kicking, smelling, counting, reading"
- mu- "with a quick movement, heat, light, mind or emotions"
- pʰa- "with the end of a long object, the fist; by wrapping"
- pʰi- "with the side of a long object, the eyes, an ax, a hammer"
- pʰu- "by blowing"
- qa- "between forces: with the teeth, by chewing, eating"
- si- "by water: wetting, dissolving, slipping, floating, rain, tongue"
- ša- "by a long object moving lengthwise; with a mesh"
- šu- "by pulling, pushing and pulling; with a long flexible object"
For example, the root /hca/ "knock over" can occur unprefixed as "fall over" where no agency is indicated, but is typically prefixed to expand upon the meaning: ba-hca- "knock over with snout", bi-hcha- "throw someone in wrestling", ca-hcha- "knock over by backing into", da-hcha- "push over with the hand", du-hca- "push over with the finger", di-hcha- "be knocked over by a falling object", etc.
Suffixes
A sampling of verb suffixes:- Directionals include -ad "along, here", -mul "around", -mad "in an enclosed or defined place", -aq "out from here; north or west from here".
- Directionals/Inceptives -ala "down" and -ibic "up, away" also mark the beginning of an action.
- Causative -hqa.
- Durative -ad with many other allomorphs, such as -id, -cid, -med, depending on the preceding segment and the length of the stem.
- Evidentials include quotative -do, circumstantial -qa, and visual -ya. The /a/ of the Evidentials deletes when no other suffix follows.
- Absolutive -w after vowels, -u after /d/, and -ʔ after other consonants.
Position class XIV (Evidentials, Modals, Imperatives, Futures, Absolutive, Adverbializers) represents the largest set of suffixes and is the only slot that is obligatorily filled in every verb.
A few examples of verbs with many affixes, the root shown in bold:
- pʰa-ʔdi-c-á:d-ala-w "to poke with the end of a stick while moving downhill"
- cʰi-ʔdí-ccic’-a:dad-u "to walk along picking up things and pulling them close to oneself"
- nohpʰo-yíʔ-ciʔ-do "it's said that those former people used to live (like that)"
Syntax
The basic word order of Kashaya is quite flexible in main clauses; however, the default location for the verb is final, and this position is required in subordinate clauses. A notable feature is that when a verb does occur in non-final position, it takes the suffix -e:. Some possible orders are illustrated here with the simple sentence "I see that dog", containing the elements ʔa "I (subj)", mul "that (obj)", hayu "dog", can’- "see".- hayu mul ʔa can’
- hayu ʔa mul can’
- hayu ʔa cade: mul
- cade: ʔa hayu mul
Oswalt (1961) reports that younger speakers tend to favor the SVO order typical of English.
Case marking
The most important case markers are subjective and objective case. (Others are the vocative and comitative, of more limited application.) Most nouns are marked with the subjective ʔem or the objective ʔel; these are morphologically complex and contain the actual case markers /m/ and /l/, found with verbal expressions.- ʔacac’ em ʔima:ta ʔél cadu — "the man (ʔacac) sees the woman (ʔima:ta)"
- ʔahca qáwiwa-l cadé: ʔa — "I see the house (ʔahca) he is building (qawiwa-)"
Personal names take the suffix -to in the objective case, zero in the subjective.
Pronouns have distinct forms in subjective and objective case; the forms are not easily analyzed but the objective case generally ends in -(a)l or -to.
| Singular | Plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjective | Objective | Subjective | Objective | |
| 1st person | ʔa(:) | to(:) | ya | yal |
| 2nd person | ma | mito | maya | mayal |
| 3rd person masc | mu:kin’ | mu:kito, mu:bal | ma:cac | ma:cal |
| 3rd person fem | man’ | ma:dal | ||
| Reflexive | ti(:) | tito | same as singular | |
Demonstratives are also distinguished for case; they are given here as subjective/objective:
- mu(:) / mul — "that, this, it, those, these, they (vague demonstrative or anaphoric reference)"
- maʔu / maʔal — "this, these (the closer object)"
- haʔu / haʔal — "that, those (the further object)"
Switch reference
Switch referenceSwitch reference
In linguistics, switch-reference describes any clause-level morpheme that signals whether certain prominent arguments in 'adjacent' clauses co-refer...
refers to markings according to whether a subordinate
verb has the same or different subject as the main verb. In Kashaya it also marks whether the time of the
action is the same, or preceding the main verb action in the
past or future. There is no consistent expression of
these categories except for the element /pʰi/ in both future
suffixes, but the remaining /la/ is not identifiable as a separate suffix.
| Simultaneous | Past | Future | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same subject | -in | -ba | -pʰi |
| Different subject | -em | -wli, -ʔli | -pʰila |
The suffix containing /li/ is realized as -wli after vowels, -u:li (or /uwli/) after d, and -ʔli after other consonants; this allomorphy is related to that of the very common Absolutive suffix, -w, -u, -ʔ. A few examples of these morphemes:
- t’eti:bícʰ-pʰi maya miyíc’kʰe — "you should stand up and (then) speak" [same subject, future tense]
- pʰala cóhtoʔ, duwecí:d-em — "he left again as night was falling" [different subject, simultaneous]
- cohtóʔ da:qac’-ba cohtó:y — "having wanting to go, he went" [same subject, past tense]
- ʔama: qʰaʔa:dú-ʔli, cohtoʔ — "after morning had come, she left" [different subject, past tense]; consonant-final stem /qʰaʔa-aduc/
External links
- Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of Stewarts Point Rancheria, tribal language website
- Ethnologue: Kashaya
- Vocabulary Words in Native American Languages: Pomo
- Kashaya language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian LanguagesSurvey of California and Other Indian LanguagesThe Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas...